This issue features an interview with Jann Alexander, author of Unspoken, and why worldbuilding isn't just for science fiction and fantasy.

Relive the early days of the personal computer industry in the 1980s in Amiga. Laura must face a past she wants to forget to deal with problems in her present. AuthorsReading.com said, "Stern creates a protagonist who has the wherewithal to handle the personal, social, and technical problems of her era, portraying a woman of astonishing powers.”

Get your copy of Amiga at your favorite bookstore or on Kindle Unlimited. To purchase a signed copy and see the computer that inspired the novel, meet me at the Commodore LA Super Show, April 26–27, in Burbank, California.

I passed the 31,000-word mark in my tarot-inspired dark romance, Trevor and the Eight of Swords. Writing a novel is often described as building an airplane while it's in flight. (Given the current state of aviation, this might not be the best metaphor right now.) In the case of my novel, I needed to stop and look at my worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is defined as creating an imaginary world with consistent and coherent qualities such as history, geography, culture, and ecology. It is typically associated with science fiction and fantasy, but it's also important when we write about real places.

My novels Amiga, The Remainders, and the upcoming Christina's Portrait are set in part in my childhood home of Reseda, California. Reseda has appeared in many songs, movies, and TV shows, but not always accurately. There isn't a "freeway running through the yard" (although one was proposed) nor is there a "Mall of Reseda" as in Terminator 2. While people who've never been to the San Fernando Valley might not know or care, this is nails on a chalkboard to those of us who know Reseda well. It's important to get the details right, and those details can help bring your story to life.

Go to the place you're writing about. If you can't, interview people who live there. Here are some details to look for.

• What are the ambient sounds of the place? A steady rush of traffic? Crickets? Birds? 
• What does it smell like? Cut grass? Fumes? Fetid sewage?
• What are unusual things that stand out in the neighborhood?
• How do people typically get around town? Walk? Drive? Use mass transit?
• What are the distances between points in town? How long does it take to get from one place to another?
• What is the lore of the place? When was it founded, by whom, and why? Who lived there before and what happened to them? (If you're writing about the United States, you better learn this history before it's erased.)
• How did the streets and other places get their names? Are there any significant parks, monuments, and landmarks? Why are they there and what makes them significant?
• How old are the buildings? What is their architecture? How does it fit with the climate and history?
• What parts of town are for residences, businesses, and manufacturing? What are the richer and poorer parts of town? Why was the community structured this way?

Here's one example of how I use these details in this scene from The Remainders.

I noticed things walking around that most people don’t see just driving by. Like the smell of flowers from the flower shop. All those fragrances blending together. Or the people working out in the fitness studio, shouting and squatting in their tight spandex. There was an art supply store with murals on the front and sides of the building, all of them beautifully painted.

They had a lot of auto shops. One had a Dodge with its front-end caved in. Obviously, someone wasn’t paying attention while driving. Or someone was drunk. That’s what happened to Doug. He drove home buzzed from a party and totaled his new BMW M3. His dad was really pissed. He grounded Doug for two weeks and bought him another one. I still don’t know how Doug beat that manslaughter charge.

Look for details like these as you write. They can put your readers further into the world of your story, and they assure the residents of your real-life setting that you did their hometown right.

I'm back doing author events! Here's where you'll find me.

Commodore LA Super Show, April 26–27 VFW Hall, Burbank

I'm back at LA's premier event for the Commodore community. You can see first-hand the computer behind my novel Amiga as well as other vintage Commodore computers. I'll have copies of my novels for sale and autographing, and I'll talk about Commodore 64 software. Find all the information at the Commodore LA Super Show website.

Local Author Fair, Fullerton Library, August 23

Get caught up with your summer reading at this event featuring authors from throughout Orange County. We will be at the Fullerton Library from 12–4 pm. In the meantime, you can watch my reading at the 2023 event on YouTube.

Look for more events soon!

Jann Alexander's Unspoken: A Dust Novel shows the devastation of the 1930's Dust Bowl from the eyes of a Texas girl, Ruby Lee Becker, and her mother, Willa Mae, who is desperate to reconnect with her. I asked Jann to write about her writing career, her influences, and her novel.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I had a three-decades career as an art director in advertising, editorial design, and print communications in the D.C. area, before moving to Austin. Now I’m a 20-year resident of central Texas, an author and artist, and creator of the Vanishing Austin photography series. My lifelong storytelling habit and my more recent passion for Texas history merged to become the historical novel Unspoken, my first book in The DUST Series. I write about all things creative on my blog, Pairings. When I’m not reading, writing, or creating, I’m photographing or biking, hiking, skiing, and kayaking. I always brake for historical markers. 

Which author had the biggest influence on your writing? 

Every author I read (and I read voraciously) influences my writing—there’s always something to be learned. But as a high school sophomore, my introduction to Ernest Hemingway’s writing set the standard for me. As I did then, I still read both historical and literary fiction—but I have a special fondness for novels that travel back in time.  

Tell us about your upcoming novel, Unspoken. 

Dusted out in the Dirty Thirties and landing far from home, young Ruby Lee Becker vows to find family and remake home—if she can face up to the things we don’t speak of.  

It’s 1935 in the heart of the Dust Bowl, and Ruby Lee Becker can’t breathe. The Becker family has clung to its Texas Panhandle farm through six years of drought, dying crops, and dust storms. On Black Sunday, the biggest blackest storm of them all threatens ten-year-old Ruby with deadly dust pneumonia and requires a drastic choice—one her mother, Willa Mae, will forever regret.

If she’s to survive, Ruby must leave the only place she’s ever known. Far from home in Waco, and worried her mother has abandoned her, she’s determined to get back.

Even after twelve years, Willa Mae still clings to memories of her daughter. Unable to reunite with Ruby, she’s broken by their separation. 

Through rollicking adventures and harrowing setbacks, the tenacious Ruby Lee embarks on her perilous quest for home—and faces her one unspoken fear.

What was it about the subject of the Dust Bowl that interested you?

During the Dust Bowl era, 2.5 million people were displaced from devastation of drought and dust storms in the Plains states. It was the largest mass migration of Americans in our history. The plight of people abandoning their uninhabitable homes to go west seeking work has been told endless times. I wanted to write about those who stayed on—stubbornly, risking great cost to their families’ health and mental state, clinging to their dream (perhaps unwisely)—and how a family of five bore the burden of one person’s choice. I chose the Texas Panhandle, in the northwest corner of the state, for the family’s farm, because it’s considered the epicenter of the Dust Bowl. The drought and dust storms affected areas in Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico. 

Tell us about how you did research for this novel. 

I love to research, and my process was intense over many years. I own a pretty deep library of Texana, probably over 70 books, and have amassed countless articles, maps, charts, photographs, films. It’s all inspiring to me. I have created a searchable database for it all, and consider that research to be paying it forward for the books I will write. Getting immersed in period photographs at the Library of Congress, and old maps and oral histories, is very inspiring to me.  

But I knew the direction I would take with my story pretty early on; the massive amount of research I did helped me create the right setting, atmosphere, mood, attitudes, causes, reactions, lingo and historical accuracy of the era. 

What are things you learned about this period that surprised you? 

In a few key finds, my research inspired characters and major plot developments—the discovery during research is critical. And that was the really fun part. Honoring my No-Spoilers Policy, I’ll say that because of those surprises, some major icons we all know from the past show up in supporting, but significant, roles.  

As for surprises about the time period, the major one was a revelation to me but not to anyone in science or the business of land promotion: Since the great explorer John Wesley Powell mapped huge swathes of the west in 1878 for the USGS, it’s been known the 100th meridian divides arid land from humid in Texas. That makes the part of Texas west of roughly, Abilene, desert, getting less than 19 inches of rainfall on average, per year. Still the southern Plains in Texas were sold as farm land to unsuspecting buyers, which would one day lead to contributing to the Dust Bowl. 

What was the greatest challenge writing this book?

Writing Unspoken over several years was always entertaining, and felt fine as cream gravy. But having to chop fully half of the 220,000 very important words I’d written (to the proper length of a historical novel) hurt me to the core. Because I’m a glass half-full type, eventually I realized that meant I already had the main draft of a sequel written. It’s called Overdue, and I hope it will be out next year. 

What are lessons from the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression that we should learn today?

We live in a country faced with droughts and where we battle over water. Preservation, planning and prevention hold the key, as they did when remedies were put in place in the 1930s—but we face constant pressure to value immediacy and avoid long-term solutions. In a world where migration is a constant, retelling the plight of those fleeing the Dust Bowl could enhance our understanding of the challenges today’s migrants face. We have little memory of the time Americans were themselves displaced migrants in their own country. It was an era that left so many lessons to be learned from its history—if we can but learn them. 

Where can readers learn more about you?

My website: https://www.jannalexander.com

My blog, Pairings: https://www.jannalexander.com/blog

About Unspoken: https://www.jannalexander.com/post/unspoken-book-club-fiction

Attend my Book Club Launch for Unspoken, July 3: https://www.jannalexander.com/events/unspoken-book-club-launch

Find me on Social:

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/JannAlexanderAuthor

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jannalextx.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jannalextx/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jannalextx/

Preorder Unspoken now! 

Unspoken: A Dust Novel will be released on July 3, 2025. You can get a 15% discount if you preorder from the publisher's website, Black Rose Writing. Information and links are on Jann's website. 

I met with Introverted Indies to talk about The Remainders and my writing experiences. The interview is now available on their YouTube channel.

I also spoke with Joseph D'Urso for his Rough Writer channel about my experiences with indie publishing, getting my books into local bookstores, and writing character-driven stories. See my interview on YouTube.

On the Authors Answer site, I talk about how I use playlists, the supposed difference between "authors" and "writers," my love for baseball, and what brings me joy as an author. Read my interview here.

Also check out my interview with Rayanne Thorn Krueger about The Remainders, why I chose to be a writer, my thoughts about the future of writing and much more on the Real Words podcast.  

If you are an author who wants to be interviewed, send me an email to admin@matthewarnoldstern.com with the following information:

• Your name.
• A brief bio (100 words or less).
• Your books.
• What you would like to talk about in your interview.

By supporting each other, we can all grow!

I hope you have enjoyed this newsletter. If you have any comments and suggestions, feel free to email me at admin@matthewarnoldstern.com. 

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I'll be in touch again next month with more news and content.